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Sunday, April 22, 2012

Fireforge Games: Plastic Mounted Sergeants Cavalry Reviewed!

Hi, Here's the promised review of the Fireforge Games Mounted Sergeants! First of all I must admit that I'm very happy that Fireforge Games, a relativly new company has decided to released these unusual miniatures to be produced in plastic. Instead of the usal fully clad knighst that have opted for the mounted sergeants which were lesser armed cavalry that rode in support of more wealthy knights. They often comprised out of squires, rich commoners and lesser nobility who cannot afford the expensive heavy armour of a real knight. These soldiers are no match for fully armoured knights but will perform good when supporting smaller units of knights or attacking less armoured units such as militia and bowmen.

Artwork

Such as all the artwork for Fireforge Games, this box cover is drawn by Mariusz Kozik. Kozik is a great concept artist and has already worked for some great names in the wargame industry such as Wargames Factory and Osprey Publishing.

The box content

This Mounted Sergeants plastic boxed set contains enough modular parts to build twelve mounted sergeants. Each of these mounted miniatures exist out of four parts which are the head, body, arms and horse. These parts can be further enchanced with additionnal splendid bits such as separate cloaks which are also suited for conversion work.

The actual box includes three sprues of which two are called the soldier sprues and the third being a command sprues from which you can build a commander, standard bearer and musician. The Command sprues of the boxed set is similar to the command sprue of the Templars except that the sprue contains some extra kite shields typical for this kind of mounted troops. The soldier sprue contains sufficient bits to assemble your sergeants with all sorts of cool weapons such as flails, swords, axes and lances. Please note the seperate cloaks which are just begging to be used in all sorts of great conversions.

The shields of the soldier sprue are a bit different than the shields from both the Teutonic Knight and Templar sprues as they have seperate arms and shields which fit perfectly. The sprues from the other sets had also seperate arms and shields but did not have attachment holes in which you could fit the shields.

One of the greatest parts of these sprues are the ten head variants of which every one has his own character. This wide variety allows you to build a whole bunch of mounted sergeants without them looking all the same. The heads come in a variety of helmets or chainmail caps. When assembling the box you have enough spare heads to fill up your bits box which is always useful for further conversions.

The horses included in the boxed set are all unbarded and come in the following sprue of which four are supplied within the box. All of these horses are multipart as the body halves, heads and tails come individually a bit in the same style as the Games Workshop horses. The horses are of the same excellent quality as the Perry Miniatures horses but the heads look a bit skinnier.

Scale comparison

To give an idea of the size of the horses I have included a picture of the the Fireforge Games plastic horses along with some horses of other manaufacturers that produce plastic horses. From left to right you can see: heroic Games Workshop Warhammer horse, Games Workshop Lord of the Rings horse, Fireforge Games horse and to finish a Perry Miniatures horse.

The conclusion

In my opinion this boxed set gives you top-notch value for your money as you receive twelve mounted sergeants for only £17.00. For the sole reason of comparison, Perry Miniatures sells theirs metal mounted sergeants for £8 in packs of three miniatures which would be £32 when buying 12 of them. In addition you also miss all the spare bits and weapons for further conversions. I've managed to assemble one of the mounted sergeants and the build was quite straight forwards. You can buy these miniatures direct from Fireforge Gamesbut have just noticed they now retail for only £17.00 from Wayland Gamesin the UK.